Why Digital Privacy Matters: Protect Yourself & Your Business

Digital privacy impacts your communications, how you share data, what you connect to your networks, how you shop, how you run your business, and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Digital privacy matters when it comes to protecting yourself or your business.

The consequences of not investing in digital privacy are several. Here are a few examples:

• Intercepted communications.
• Data breaches.
• Identity theft.
• Fraud, which would include phishing, spam, and scams.
• Cyberstalking.
• On the business side of things, lawsuits are a consequence. Even more so if your business operates in a state, or country, that has data privacy laws.

Bsquared Intel provides solutions for digital privacy for yourself or your business. We address Identity Theft, we review digital footprints, and we offer help with cybersecurity compliance. All of this helps with keeping up with the evolving threat landscape.

The Evolving Threat Landscape

You have a lot to contend with on the personal and business front when it comes to the ever evolving threat landscape.

Within the last roughly six months, there were multiple data breaches that resulted in the exposure of Social Security Numbers, government IDs (e.g. drivers licenses,passports), and contact information.

These incidents include:

• National Public Data: Exposed data included SSNs, contact information, and physical addresses. National Public Data shuttered because it couldn’t handle the lawsuits.
• PowerSchool: This cloud service provider for school systems was breached and it included students’ grades, SSNs, medical history, and other data.
• DISA Global Solutions: The most recent of the data breaches mentioned, this company provides drug/alcohol screening and employment background checks. The data exposed includes names, SSNs, drivers licenses/other government IDs, financial information, and other undisclosed data.

Data breaches aside, you have companies collecting data on people for marketing purposes and governments are using data brokers to surveille its citizens.

New tech devices are important to consider in the threat landscape. For instance, as tracking tags become more widely used, like the Apple AirTag, Amazon Tiles, and AirTag-like devices for Android, these pose privacy risks to you if you happen to be in an abusive relationship.

Having some understanding of the evolving threat landscape, let’s talk about why privacy matters for individuals.

Why Privacy Matters For Individuals

If you’re reading this article, you probably have an online account of some sort. Maybe you bank, shop, or pay your bills online. Perhaps you have a social media account, or use email, or signed up for any number of online services. In short, you’re entrusting your personal information to companies in the hope that they protect your data.

There’s two side of this coin. On one side, a company who acts in good faith will take reasonable measures to protect your data. On the other side, you must use the security and privacy settings they offer you to lock down your accounts. You must also read and understand the company’s Terms of Service and privacy policy. That way, you can make an informed decision on whether or not to sign up for that company’s services, or to buy something from their e-Store.

To put it another way, you have to prepare to protect yourself, or family, from Identity Theft if a company that has your sensitive data is breached. Even if contact information is exposed, that’s enough for a bad actor to start phishing, scamming, or spamming you.

The amount of publicly available data that exists and data acquired through theft, or snooping, is even more motivation for more individual privacy. This introduces the topic of cyberstalking and online harassment.

With the amount of public information available to a person online, this could be used against you by someone who doesn’t think too fondly of you. This is why it’s important to protect your digital footprint.

If you have social media, ensure you’re using all the security and privacy settings afforded to you. We also have to bring up data brokers again, as they help fuel people search engines. This is why it’s important to remove your data from them, where possible, to improve your privacy.

Also with social media, and anywhere else online that allows you to share things, what you post can lead to the compromise of your personal data. What you share can also cause things like account takeovers, threats, and harassment.

Privacy also matters with everyday tech that you buy.

Things like personal/virtual home assistants, tracking tags, smart locks, cars, toys, and smart TVs can upend your privacy. This is why we always recommend that you research things to learn about what privacy issues exist with whatever technology you want to buy. Tracking tags like AppleAir Tags are used by abusers to track the location of their victim. This is why it’s important to educate yourself about what technology exists.

While this section only highlights a few things, this shows why privacy matters for an individual such as yourself.

Businesses also have their own needs for privacy.

Why Digital Privacy is Important for Organizations

For us, one of the more obvious needs for privacy for a business is compliance with data privacy laws or regulations. Depending on where you do business, you might deal with GDPR compliance. If you’re operating within the U.S., you’ll bump up against a growing sea of states with their own set of data privacy laws.

Compliance is key. Failing to take reasonable measures to protect data can result in heavy fines if your business experiences a data breach that impacts customers.

There’s the financial and reputational impact of data breaches. We wrote about it in this article so that you can understand the types of costs involved.

Privacy is important for your business because you also need it to protect your secret sauce. If your intellectual property gets into the wrong hands, your business could evaporate if a competitor or threat actor got their hands on it.

You also need to protect your employees. You might have payroll data, sensitive communications, background checks, healthcare information, and other PII. Protecting the privacy of your employees is important.

Some Ways to Strengthen Privacy

For yourself:

• Unfortunately passwords are still a thing, so practice good password hygiene.
• Enable 2FA for accounts that offer it. The more secure way to go about it is the use of an authenticating app like Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Authy, or similar.
• Leverage all the security and privacy tools social media platforms provide you.
• Be aware of what you share online.
• Due your due diligence for any privacy issues when buying new tech for your home.

For your business:

• Build out a cybersecurity framework to implement the proper security controls.
• Deploy cybersecurity awareness training multiple times a year for employees. This would include training modules and other education initiatives throughout the year.
• Encrypt your data and use the practice of Least Privilege Access when allowing employees access to business assets.
• Regularly conduct threat assessments and security audits.
• Regularly keep an eye out for online threats toward your organization, employees, and customers.

How We help

On the personal side of things we offer:

• Identity Theft protection and restoration services for you or your family.
• Digital footprint reviews to look for issues related to cybersecurity, privacy, and reputation.
• Education and training.
• Custom projects.

For your business, we offer the following:

• External cyber risk/threat assessments.
• Training/Education.
• Consulting for cybersecurity frameworks.
• Custom projects.

Some examples of how we helped our clients

Personal:

• Found and addressed social media content that was reputationally harmful.
• Locked down devices and accounts of a client worried about their ex accessing them.
• Provided Identity Theft protection to clients who fell for scams or wanted to be proactive.

Business:

• External cyber risk/threat assessment for a client revealed misuse and abuse of their intellectual property opening up a path for legal recourse.
• Cybersecurity awareness training for a client and their staff helped better inform them of current risks and threats to their organization and their clients.
• One of our custom projects is helping a small business create a stronger security posture through the use of different security controls and policies.

Be proactive and protect your data!

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